


East End

by Asynca



Series: Ready, Set, Go! - Speed Prompts [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-07-21 13:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7389460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Speed prompt, written in 68 minutes. Prompted on Tumblr with: "Widowmaker appreciates good food and goes to high-end restaurants in fake ID's and uses untraceable credit cards, she picks a spot that's a little bit too close to where Lena lives to be a beliveable coincidence. A stalk-turned date ensues." I did a bit of a twist on that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

It had been yonks since I'd been back home in London, and half the bloody city had grown an extra ten stories while I'd been gone. You'd think I'd be used to all that by now—what with all the time travel—but it was still jarring. There was also a gigantic new shopping centre right next to my flat on the East side as well which meant I had the great pleasure of watching some lady on an animated billboard shampoo her hair while I ate my breakfast... and my lunch, and my tea. I bet I was even going to end up have _dreams_ about 'smooth, full-bodied hair!' eventually.

Anyway, after all that advertising, and despite the fact that I didn't need smooth, full-bodied hair because I'd always lopped it all off, capitalism got too much for me and I ended up _in_ the shopping centre, checking out what sort of shops had opened there. I could always do with another pair of trousers, right? Although… having said that, more tops were what I _really_ needed. It was pretty difficult for me to find ones that looked alright with my Chronal Accelerator _and_ that actually fit underneath it, though, so I always ended up buying trousers and shoes instead.

I'd just ducked into a really posh shoe shop to take a peek at some boots that were probably _way_ too much money for me when I spotted some _really_ long, smooth hair that definitely didn't need extra body.

I knew that hair.

I knew the hourglass body attached to it, too—and the blue-tipped nose and blue-white, corpse-like pallor. She wasn't wearing her sprayed-on lycra uniform and pointing a gun at me this time, though. She was _shoe-shopping_ in East end.

What was _Widowmaker_ doing here?!

I may have ever so slightly _freaked the bloody hell out_ and recalled outside to the window, pressing my face against it to watch her.

My first thought was that she'd come to kill me. Of course she had, right? After all, why on earth would she be in _East_ London knowing I lived here unless it was to kill me? I watched her for ages before I was absolutely, positively, dead certain she had no idea I was here. I actually saw her _smile_ , and not in a creepy, evil I'm-about-to-top-you way, either. Apparently she _really_ liked those heels…?

It was _weird_. Totally and utterly weird. I felt like my Chronoal Accelerator was malfunctioning again and I'd been transported to some alternate universe where she hadn't been brainwashed and turned into a monster and was just a normal person again. Well, a normal person with a heart condition, anyway.

I followed her through a series of shops—boy, did _she_ seem to have a lot of money _,_ Talon must pay pretty well—and by the time she'd reached the last of the shops and headed out to the car park, she had so many bags I had no idea how she was managing them all.

I followed her out because I still couldn't work out what she was doing here; part of me was still a little bit worried that she _would_ pull a rifle on me the moment I let my guard down.

Her car was a bloody _Porsche_ —jet black, of course—and after she'd put all her bags in the boot, she scanned the car park around her. That was suspicious, wasn't it? She _must_ be up to something after all, otherwise why would she—

She took her top off.

That was—erm, alright, kind of unexpected, and— _whoa_. You know when you really shouldn't look at something, but you can't look away? _Yeah_ , that. She was _fit_.

I kept watching because I thought she was going to change into her Widowmaker uniform—I promise that's why—but she was just turning a nice blouse she'd bought in the right way and taking her sweet bloody time about it. She did at least have a bra on: one of those lacy ones that look very pretty but which itch like mad. She didn't look at all bothered by it, though.

_I_ was bothered by it. Every time I pointed guns at her now I was going to be stuck picturing her in that bra; like I didn't cop a distracting eyeful every time I was face-to-face with her already.

_Note to self,_ I thought, peeking through my fingers, _stop this immediately._ I considered duplicating myself five seconds ago and covering my own eyes so I could un-see it, except in my experience having two versions of myself at the same time caused more problems than it ever solved and I always ended up with two sets of memories instead of one and they had _really_ odd dreams about it later.

Once she had the blouse on, I completely ignored the 'stop' command to myself and followed her at a safe distance as she sashayed out of the car park. You know, just in case she was doing something evil after all.

She headed straight up the road to Greenhill Towers, the poshest restaurant for miles, which I knew for a fact had a whole lot of meeting rooms for rich people who wanted to do business in private.

_I bet it's a meeting with Talon_ , I thought, and tried to follow her in.

I got stopped at the door. "Sorry," the host told me in a French accent as he looked me up and down like I might be local riff-raff. "You need a reservation to dine in _this_ establishment." From his tone of voice, what he _really_ meant was, 'you look too poor to eat here', and he was completely right.

"I'm not planning on _dining in this establishment_ ," I told him, maybe taking the piss just a little, "my— _friend_ just walked in here and I wanted to have a quick chat with her."

His face looked like he might just have smelt something horrible. " _You_ are friends with the Comtesse Mirelle Dupont?"

Comtesse Mir—I _scoffed_. "That is _rubbish_ ," I told him flat out. "She is _not_ a 'Comtesse'. Her name is Amelie Lacroix and I—"

"I saw her credit card myself, _Madame_ ," he said, in a voice which suggested he didn't want to address me with an honorific. "I know who she is, so if you _don't mind_ , perhaps you'd like to find a restaurant more to your—"

"Thanks, I actually _do_ mind," I told him sarcastically. I wasn't going to get past him walking like a normal person; I'd have to blink past later when he wasn't looking properly. I'd not walked outside for maybe a whole minute before another waiter came up to the haughty host and whispered to him.

The host took a great big sniff through the long nose he'd been looking down at me past and then beckoned me to come back.

_Weird_. I did anyway.

He did _not_ seem too happy about what he was about to say. "Apologies about the mistake," he said stiffly, "it seems the Comtesse is expecting you."

Beyond him, at a table in the restaurant, _Widowmaker_ was looking _right at me_ , and not through a sight for one. She raised her wine glass slightly and then took a delicate sip from it, a smug little smile on her face.

That's when I noticed the table was set for two. There was a waiter there, holding a chair out for me.

My jaw _dropped_. You had to be _bloody_ kidding me…

The host cleared his throat. "Shall I take your coat?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speed prompt, writing in 119 minutes. I wrote a sequel to the previous one because of all the dire threats I got if I didn't continue it.

 

* * *

Widowmaker—she _hated_ being called 'Amélie' now—watched me smugly from behind her wine as the posh waiter seated me, insisted on laying a serviette on my lap, and then forced me to pick a wine from his horribly expensive wine list despite me telling him that I _hated_ wine.

It had to be a trap. "What's all _this_ about, then?" I asked as soon as he was gone, fully expecting her to lean in and be all ' _and now I will tell you how I'm going to kill you_ ' or the like.

She swirled her wine. "It's a little game I like to play."

Ugh, could she have _been_ any more creepy? "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's bad manners to play with your food?" I asked her, before I realised how that sounded.

Her eyebrows went up. "'My food'?"

_Bollocks_. I went red. I _hated_ that she could say so much with a smirk. "Well, you're always calling me a _blowfly_ and a _mosquito_ , and so I kind of… I sort of meant that…" She just sat there looking smug and letting me languish in my embarrassment. Well, I wouldn't let her. I pulled myself together and cleared my throat. " _Anyway_ , I'll not be part of some messed up _game_ of yours, I've got _enough_ problems with Overwatch being in the papers again for—"

"Too late."

We had to stop for a moment because the waiter came back and spend bloody _ages_ pouring my wine and fussing over it and making me taste it before he filled the damn glass and buggered off. I sniffed it: _yuck_.

She had another sip of her own. "Frankly, I'm disappointed in you," she told me regretfully, "you took a lot longer than I expected to find me. We were in almost the same shops for at least an hour and you were _completely_ oblivious..."

"Well, pardon me for not being _a trained assassin_ and expecting danger in broad daylight a shopping centre!" I told her, wondering if I should chance the bread or if it was filled with poison and would be the last thing I ever did. "How should I know you were expecting me to find you and follow you through all the shops and out to your… out to your…"

It… suddenly occurred to me she'd have known I was watching when she was changing by her car.

"To my…?" she prompted me oh-so innocently.

I shut my jaw. I'd had it with her. "Listen here, _Widowmaker_ ," I said, jabbing my finger in the air towards her, "if you're going to take a shot at me, why don't you just bloody well do it? Or is this all because you know you can't kill me, so you're just going to settle for messing about with me and driving me absolutely mental?"

She looked unmoved. "While that _is_ a pleasant side effect of having dinner with you," she told me impassively, "I thought that since we're so often on the same objective these days, it might be wise of us to figure out a way to work together without always trying to _kill_ each other."

"And you plan to do that how, exactly? By driving me mad and/or _actually_ killing me so it's no longer a problem?"

She gestured at the set table. "I thought we could have a nice dinner."

Well, now I _knew_ she was up to something. That was bloody ridiculous: eating 'a nice dinner' with someone who'd been actively trying to kill me for _years_. "You're mad if you think I'm going to eat anything with you," I told her, just in case she thought she could poison me that easily.

She shrugged. "Eh, suit yourself," she said, and then very elegantly cut her bread, buttered it and took a delicate bite. I wondered if perhaps the whole spider-conditioning thing made her immune to poison that would kill me? I didn't plan on finding out.

"I may not have my guns with me," I warned her, "but I _am_ wearing my Chronal Accelerator, so if you try anything, you're not going to get away with it."

She paused mid-chew to give me a look. Then, while continuing to chew her bread, leaning beside her and putting her handbag on the table. Calmly, she opened it and showed me what was inside: lipstick, a purse and nothing but other random bits and bobs, including bobby pins. "No Widow's Kiss," she said, closing it again, "at least, not in the bag…" Enjoying herself, she locked eyes with me.

Was she… ?

_No_ , definitely not. Gosh, Lena, of _course_ not, hah! Maybe she wanted me to try and guess where she'd hidden it? Maybe it was all part of her ' _liddle game_ '.

Well, I was going to find it. I leant sideways and checked under the table, but there was only a pair of really long legs in really expensive heels down there. I then blinked over to where I'd seen our coats hung to pat hers down. Nothing. I checked a plant near our table, under a couple of _other_ tables—the patrons seated there weren't too happy about that, actually—and then stood in the centre of the restaurant, trying to figure out where she'd hide a gun that she could access quickly.

She watched the whole thing with a kind of detached amusement. It was maddening. What was she playing at?

"Can I _help_ you?" the host asked me in a very haughty voice, I think to warn me I was disturbing everyone.

"Only if you can tell me where she's hidden her gun," I told him flatly. I wasn't playing her game.

The look he gave me… Instead of talking to me, he just looked across at Widowmaker. She sighed and waved her hand dismissively. " _Pauvre petite,_ she's delusional."

He sniffed at me. "That explains a lot," he said, and then went to escort me over to the table to sit down, but I wasn't having any of it.

I recalled back to the place I'd been before and probably scared the life out of him. "Look, I don't know what you're up to," I told her, "but this is _weird_."

"And _this_ is a fine dining establishment," the host told me, recovering much faster from seeing me blink that I'd expected—maybe he was a Talon operative, too? "So either you calm down and sit down, or I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave." He didn't seem too afraid of that option, actually.

"But I—"

" _No_ ," he told me, talking over me and taking me by the shoulders. "If you won't be seated, please take a moment to get some fresh air and don't come back in until you can behave." Despite the fact I was protesting, he walked me outside and deposited me on the most expensive-looking balcony I'd ever seen.

The was a clunk behind me as he closed the door.

Well, at least there wasn't enough furniture out here to hide a gun in, anyway.

I peered over the balcony, torn between the smart thing to do which would be to escape before she could kill me, and the silly thing, which was stay and trying and figure out what the bloody hell was going on with her. Unfortunately, I didn't think my brain was going to win this one. I was just having a good argument with it when I heard the clunk of the door again and jumped.

When I turned, _Widowmaker_ was there. And she was alone, and she was _looking_ at me with that intent I'm-about-to-murder-you expression I recognised.

Oh, no!

My heart started to race, and I glanced over the edge. _I could probably make that jump_ , I thought. I might need to in a moment.

She began to advance on me.

Oh, gosh. Oh, golly gosh. I glanced down again. Should I do it now? "Stay back!" I told her, and then tried to pose like Genji had taught me. I wasn't very good at it.

She gave me the _oddest_ look and then _laughed_. It was a cruel sound. "Foolish girl," she told me in a tone I recognised. "You think _that_ would stop _me_?"

No, I didn't think that. But it was better than just standing here looking terrified. So was blinking, wasn't it? I _did_ blink—I aimed behind her—but unfortunately she knew me too well and in an instant I was swung up against the balcony wall and there was a sharp _crack_ as my Chronal Accelerator collided with it.

_No_! Gasping, I looked down at it; it as flickering as it rebooted, and when I tried to blink, I couldn't. She was already standing over me. I tried to push her away, but she'd always been just that little bit stronger.

So this was it: this was the moment where she tried to murder me. "I _knew_ this was a trap!"

She chuckled once. "Yes," she said ominously, "but you're mistaken about what I want to catch you for."

While I was trying to figure out what she meant by that, she stepped up against me and pinned me with her hips. Her whole body, right up against mine. And she mightn't have been wearing her uniform, but what was _was_ wearing was tight enough that I could feel what was underneath it, especially what was underneath her blouse. Suddenly, all I could think of was that lacy bra I'd seen her in as I locked eyes with her. There was _hunger_ in them.

W-What on—?

She leant her lips in towards mine at a glacial pace, eyes open, _watching_ me. When her lips touched mine they were soft—god, so soft—but cool.

I was too shocked to even move. Any second, I expected to feel a knife in my stomach or a bullet in my head, or something—she was just trying to distract me, right…?—but it didn't seem to be happening. What was happening was that she kissed down my neck and got _that place_ that is guaranteed to make me completely useless, and it did, my knees were weak and my mouth was… wow, open? And my hands were trailing over her waist completely of their own accord and sliding down to the seat of her skirt to that round, firm, incredibly sexy _bloody hell what was I doing_?!

I pushed her away from me, _gasping_. We were both breathing heavily and there was a kind of rosy hue to her cheeks for once. She was going to dive right back in on me like a spider to its prey, I could see it in her eyes, and I was _soooooo_ incredibly not going to be able to deal with that at all. I couldn't shake the awful feeling it was a trap.

Panicking, checked my Accelerator (no flicker) and blinked clean off the bloody balcony and probably to my death. Somehow I made it across to another rooftop instead, and before I _took the hell off_ , I looked back to see if she was following me.

She wasn't. She was leaning casually on the railing of the balcony, cleaning up lipstick at the corner of her mouth with a thumb. She saw me watching and slowly, sensually _licked_ it.

Did she just… I _gaped_ at her. _Christ all-bloody-mighty_ , I could not deal with this. I could _especially_ not deal with how much she was enjoying it or how close I'd gotten to just going for it with her on the balcony. Argh!

With her lipstick still all over my face, I took off across the rooftops as fast as my Accelerator could carry me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in 121 minutes.

The problem with a bloody assassin having a thing about killing me is that she was an _assassin_ : it wasn’t like doors or locks or anything would bother her if she decided tonight was the night she was going to murder me. I locked everything anyway, drew all my blinds, and then sat in the dark listening to all the odd noises coming from the nooks and crannies of my old flat, imagining all the horrible ways she might try to kill me.

It was silly; Widowmaker had been trying to kill me for ages and she’d never bothered to tail me here. It wasn’t really her style to kill people while they were pottering about their homes: she preferred dramatic, public murders that she could watch on the telly afterwards with a glass of red.

Then again, it wasn’t really her style to throw me up against a wall and snog me either, and she’d just done that…

I swallowed. It was _right_ creepy, it was, the whole kissing thing. Maybe her kissing her targets was some weird black widow spider reference I didn’t understand? I knew spiders killed their lovers after they’d got it on, so maybe she was just snogging me in preparation to kill me? She had called her rifle ‘Widow’s Kiss’ after all.

Even though it was pretty unlikely that she’d come here, I decided I’d get my blasters out just to be on the safe side. Once I had them, I sat back down to listen to all the noises that might be Widowmaker infiltrating my flat while I tried to sort out what was going on.

_She’s probably not going to come here,_ I tried to reassure myself, _her snogging me is probably just some ploy to get me thinking about her like that so when we next cross paths, she has the upper hand._

Well, it wasn’t going to work on me, that was for sure. I wasn’t some toey teenager who’d salivate at the thought of shagging her and make critical mistakes as a result, no siree! I could quite easily imagine shagging her _without_ getting dangerously distracted!

I frowned; wait, that didn’t come out right. What I’d meant was that her cheap trick of being horribly sexy and half-undressed around me wasn’t going to lead to a victory for her, and if she thought using her _womanly wiles_ on another woman was going to work, she had another think coming.

I mean, she obviously _did_ think that, though, didn’t she? Otherwise, why would she have stripped in front of me for what felt like a full half hour and then gone right in and snogged me in some posh restaurant? Clearly, she expected me to have a reaction to all that. Well, the joke was on her, because I hadn’t. Not really. Not enough to land her a victory, anyway: I was _quite_ able to dismiss that mental image of her in that fancy bra, and those cool lips against my—

A knock at the door made me jump a mile.

_It’s her_! I thought, and then very nearly blinked a few times and scuttled under the bed. Then, I rolled my eyes at myself; I’d never been afraid of her before, why should I start now? Taking a deep breath, I grabbed one of my blasters and edged up to the door.

_Her rifle could probably shoot right through the wood_ , I realised, and so trod very, very lightly so she wouldn’t know I was there to fire. The Widow’s Kiss made a very subtle ping-ping-ping sound as it focused, so I put my ear up to the door to listen for it.

“ _Lena_!” my neighbour’s gruff voice _blasted_ right on the other side, nearly deafening me. “The missus made an extra pot of mash if you’d like to pop over for some!”

I stood up, grimacing and rubbing my ears; you had to be bloody kidding me! Normally I rather liked having a de facto mother who cooked and washed up for me, but _now_? “Thanks, but I’m fine, actually!” I called back, leaning my forehead against the door.

“Well, the kettle’s on if you change your mind,” he said, and then I listened to his footsteps disappear across the hall and into his own little flat while I reflected on how completely paranoid I was being, sitting here in the dark and creeping about in my own home.

Honestly, look at me: this was bloody ridiculous. There was no way I was going to get any sleep at all if I just left it; I needed to know what that evil woman was up to or it was going to drive me mental.

I put my jacket back on so I could tuck my blasters on the inside of it, and headed back out to see if she was still in that restaurant.

It was a good plan, going back, because there was no way she’d suspect it. In fact, she was probably having a glass of victory wine over how thoroughly she’d freaked me out, never suspecting that I wasn’t freaked out at all and I was returning to get to the bottom of things.

When I made it there, I didn’t bother with the front door this time. Instead, I snuck around the laneways and hunted about for some way up to that balcony so I could creep back in. There wasn’t a ladder or anything, but there were loads of rubbish bins, and with a bit of luck I managed to stack them all on top of each other and pull myself back up before they all fell down.

Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I dusted off my hands and then turned towards the balcony door. A quick look through it revealed Widowmaker wasn’t seated at her table. That was a bit odd, because her half-eaten food was there. Perhaps she’d ducked off to the loo or something like—

“You’d make a _terrible_ assassin.”

I jumped so high I nearly recalled to the Palaeolithic era, spinning and pulling my blasters on her. Unfortunately, I was used to holsters, and because I didn’t have any I accidentally dropped one of them. It clattered across the balcony floor to her feet.

She was leaning casually against the railing with her ankles and arms crossed, in the shadow of a big old pot plant. She looked down at my blaster at her feet and then up at me with a gun pointed at her, unmoved. “I could have heard you climbing up here from my apartment in France.” She didn’t sound very impressed.

“It’s not my fault they don’t have a bloody fire exit!” I told her. “Rubbish bins aren’t exactly easy to climb up, you know!”

She laughed once like I was her evening entertainment or something. Then, she stood and kicked my blaster aside with one of her sharp heels. “So,” she said, swaying those hips as she advanced on me, “did you come back to finish what we started?”

_Oh my_ — my eyes widened. “ _No_!” I told her, waving my blaster in warning. “I came back to find out what the bloody hell you’re up to!”

She didn’t look away from me, but she did lick her lips. It was on purpose, I swear. It made me think of watching her lick her thumb as I ran off. “Oh, did you?” she said like she didn’t believe me at all. “What did you expect to find out?”

I was still staring at those lips and it took me a moment to process what she’d said. I gulped and looked back into her eyes. Honestly, that wasn’t much better. “Erm, well, I-I thought I’d sort of peek in and see what you were up to…” I suddenly realised I had no idea at all what I’d planned to do when I got here, and she knew it. Oh, no. Oh, this wasn’t good at all. She was still advancing on me, and there was a wall behind me; I couldn’t retreat any further. “I mean, p-perhaps you’d take a call from Talon, or perhaps you’d be gone because you’d followed me to my flat…”

She was feigning exaggerated interest, nodding like she was listening to a child telling her a tall story.

“It’s true!” I protested, but even to _my_ ears it sounded very she-doth-protesteth-too-much.

As if to illustrate that, walked _right_ up into my blaster, so the nose of it was pushing on her breast-bone, right in the centre of her cleavage. Her breath was cool on my face as she looked down at me. “So shoot me, then.”

T-That was— “ _What_?”

She pushed against the barrel. “If you are so sure I am doing something diabolical, shoot me. Save the world, or whatever it is that you tell yourself that you do.”

I didn’t… I mean, I couldn’t…

She gave me a cold, knowing smile. “I thought so,” she said, and then leant her lips close to my ear with my blaster still between us and murmured. “You want to know what is my master plan?”

_I think I’m actually about to die_ , I realised, wondering why that didn’t seem to concern me enough to blink away.

“My evil, evil master plan is to have a nice dinner with a woman I find very attractive,” she whispered, and while I was reeling from her just coming straight out like that and calling me ‘attractive’, she added suggestively, “and then maybe afterwards I _will_ follow her home to her flat.”

My jaw dropped.

While I was gaping at her, she stood up from my ear, turning that evil bloody smile on me again. “So, what do you say, chérie?” she asked me with unblinking eye-contact. “Will you come and share a dessert with me? The food here is absolutely _breathtaking_.”

Even that sounded like a threat. I completely expected to be poisoned, but it wasn’t like I could go home now, could I? I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was up to something, and that I was the right person to get to the bottom of it.

_Maybe two can play at this spy-game_ , I thought, trying very, very hard not to look down into her cleavage where the blaster was pointed.  

I found my voice somehow. “W-Well, perhaps someone should keep an eye on you,” I conceded a bit breathily, dropping my blaster. “You know, in case you try to do something. But I’m warning you, Widowmaker, I’m watching you!”

Her eyebrow twitched. “Oh, I hope so,” she told me over a shoulder as she turned smoothly on her heel and walking towards the door. She was doing that swishy-hip-thing on purpose, it was like having a coin swinging backwards and forwards in front of my eyes.

It was only when she cleared her throat that I realised I’d been staring at her hips instead of going through the door she’d been holding open for me.

_Whoops_ , I thought, pulling myself together and clumsily retrieving my blaster from the ground where she’d kicked it.  I was going to have to be much more careful if she wasn’t going to get the jump on me before I figured out what was _really_ going on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speed prompt, written in 81 minutes.

If you listened to Dr Zeigler, we should all be sitting across the table from our mortal enemies sorting out our differences over a nice glass of wine. Well, wherever she was, she’d be dead chuffed with me right now, because that was exactly what I was doing: I was sitting across the table from a woman who’d repeatedly tried to murder me, drinking posh wine, pretending I had any idea what a ‘chouquette’ was, and waiting for the part where she tried to murder me again.  

 _At least this time I’ve got my blasters_ , I thought as I felt the shape of them through my jacket. Since she clearly didn’t have her rifle, I felt like that at least gave me an edge.

She clearly didn’t think so, though. She had a permanent smirk, and she kept undoing things. First, it was one of the buttons on her shirt so she could make sure I copped a big eyeful of her cleavage every time I looked up from my plate. Then, it was her heels. It was only after she took off the thin scarf she had on and started to fiddle idly with her necklace— _obviously_ in some cheap ploy to make me look at the exposed skin there—I began to worry about how far she’d go in the middle of this stuffy restaurant and all these posh people.

She was enjoying the whole thing far too much. “What’s the matter, chérie?” she asked, and then fanned her cheeks as she spoke of me. “Is it a little too hot in here for you?”

If I hadn’t been blushing beforehand, I certainly was now. I didn’t want her to think she was succeeding in seducing me to distract me from whatever she was up to, though. “I’ll have you know I can tell what you’re doing, _Widowmaker_!”

She raised a single eyebrow. “I certainly hope so,” she said, taking a delicate sip of her wine. “Seeing as that I told you what I am doing.”

I scoffed, trying to act all casual-like and eat my food as if she wasn’t getting to me. Because she wasn’t, definitely not. Now, which of these spoons here was for dessert…? “I mean that I can tell what you’re really doing, not what you say you are!”

She observed my struggles with the silverware. “I don’t think _you_ even know what _you_ are doing,” she shot back. “You _do_ know how to use cutlery, don’t you, chérie?”

Oh, please. “I’m pretty sure I can manage a spoon, _thank you very much_ ,” I told her, and then grabbed the biggest, scoopiest one and dug into my croquette or chouquette or whatever the thing on my plate was called.

Apparently I’d made a mistake. “Interesting,” was her comment. “I didn’t know chouquette was a type of soup.” At my blank expression, she nodded at my hand. “That’s a soup spoon.”

I looked down at it; that _did_ explain its scoopiness... Pfft, it did the job, that’s what mattered! “Well, now it’s a croquette spoon.”

“’ _Chouquette’_.”

“Oh, _whatever_!”

She was still giving me that smirk. “And you actually don’t eat them with a spoon. You eat them with your fingers.”

Okay, that was it, I’d had it. I slammed my spoon down and stood, leaning forward on the table and jabbing a finger at her. “Listen here, this was all your idea, so you will just have to bloody well manage how I choose to eat my weird French pastries!” I told her, and then sat back down to do exactly that, adding, “And while you’re at it, stop batting those eyelashes at me. I’m not falling for it.”

While I was fuming over the whole thing, she came right out and _laughed_. Uncrossing her legs, she leant forward on her elbows and gave me an indulgent if patronising smile. “Oh, Lena,” she said, “I do so _love_ it when you’re angry.”

Let me tell you, she was very lucky I didn’t just take my guns out and kill her on the spot, because believe me, at that point it was a real possibility. I’d opened my mouth to blast her about the nerve of luring me to a French restaurant and then making fun of me not knowing things—how would she like it if I dragged her down to the rough little pub near my flat? The lads there would eat her alive!—when I felt something touch my ankle.

I jumped, looking down past the frilly table-cloth to see a slender, stockinged foot creeping up under the hem of my trousers.

When I looked back at Widowmaker, she winked at me.

That was the final straw. I was going to _murder_ this woman.

I went to spring up and _leap_ at her—not fantastic judgment on my part, I will admit—but she stepped firmly on the bridge of my foot so I couldn’t and I just sort of fell back in my chair.

“If you want to wrestle with me, Lena, I don’t think here is the place.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “But my hotel is nearby, and it has a big, thick rug that will soften your fall when I beat you.”

Since she wasn’t going to beat me, the rug was a moot point. “I think you’re forgetting someone has their _blasters_ with them!” I told her, and whipped them out—to a collective gasp from other patrons—flipping the table right over, kicking her legs out the way and _launching_ myself at her. Tableware and cutlery flew everywhere.

I caught her by surprise and managed to pin her to the floor as a result, pointing my blasters at her face. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Widowmaker, but if you think I’m going to let you get away with it, you’ve got another think coming!”

She gave me a tired look from the floor. “Yes, how very dangerous, having a nice dinner with someone. The world is clearly in great peril. Save us.”

“Like I’m thick enough to believe that’s all it is!” I told her. “You’re obviously trying to distract me with your—your,” body, cleavage, your long legs… “your _everything_ while you drug me, or poison me, or _spy_ on me, or kidnap me for Talon, or—”

“—or eat dinner? I still need to eat, you know,” she said flatly, and then turned her head to look beside us. “Some hero, you are. You’re scaring all these innocent people.”

I nearly didn’t fall for it—she was just trying to make me look away!—but the collective silence sort of indicated she might have a point. When I looked up around us, everyone else in the restaurant was frozen mid-mouthful with these horrified expressions on their faces. Whoops.

Well, I didn’t want the good people of East London to worry about this, because I had it under control. “It’s okay!” I called to them. “I’m the good guy, I promise I won’t shoot any of you!” I think maybe the fact I was holding a pair of pistols on what looked like an unarmed woman might have given them the wrong idea, though.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone in restaurant started _screaming_. It was like a circus in there. There were people running all over the place and things flying everywhere, and someone threw a plate of food at me.

When they were all gone and Widowmaker still hadn’t fought back—she was just lying there underneath me with an _I-told-you-so_ expression on her face—it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I might have overreacted a little tiny bit. The restaurant was completely ruined and I could still hear people screaming out on the street as they ran away.

While I was trying to decide if I thought baiting me so I attacked her was all part of Widowmaker’s ploy to kill me, she reached up, scooped a big glop of cream slowly off my cheek with a single finger, and then put her whole finger in her mouth, locking eyes with me as she sucked it for a moment. “Tiens, tiens...” she said afterwards, while I was definitely, definitely not panicking at all. “Looks like it’s only us in here now…”

In a second, she’d flipped me over roughly enough to slam my Chrono Accelerator into the floor and reboot it again, leaning heavily on my wrists so I couldn’t shoot her. I couldn’t even move at all.

She smiled darkly down at me. “That’s better.”

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no… I think we’d gotten to the part of the night where she tried to murder me, hadn’t we? I gulped.


	5. Chapter 5

Widowmaker’s face was right up in mine, and while I was busy worrying about that creepy smile of hers and all the horrible things it meant she was about to try and do to me, I didn’t notice what she was doing with her hands until I heard a pronounced ‘click’.

I looked up my arms: she’d handcuffed me to the radiator pipe above my head.

Well, colour me _not_ surprised. Who was I dealing with again? “Oh, of course, you just happen to have _handcuffs_ on you.”

“Please. I am an assassin.”

“Yes, but I always thought you were more of an I-shoot-people-from-five-miles-away-type assassin rather than an I-handcuff-people-to-things-type assassin.”

“I’m whatever I need to be,” she told me, making it sound _way_ dirtier than it needed to, “to get what I want.” She sat back across my hips, skirt hitched up around the top of her thighs as she sat across me. I think it must have been like that on purpose, because she looked dead smug about it when she realised where I was looking.

It was _annoying_ ; if she was going to try and kill me, she could at least stop messing about with me beforehand! “You won’t get away with this, you know,” I informed her, trying to make sure I looked at her face. “I bet someone’s already told the police, and Winston has a patch in on London patrol comms.”

She laughed. Well, it was more of a kind dark chuckle. “Get away with what?” she asked me. “ _You’re_ the one that upset a table and drew your blasters on a _poor, innocent, sweet comtesse who was just trying to enjoy her tea_ …” She said the last part in her sweetest and most innocent tone of voice.

It almost made me gag. “No one could possibly think you’re anything but _despicable_.”

There was that signature smug grin again. “And yet you are choosing to have dinner with me.”

I scoffed. “I’m only here to try and figure out what you’re up to, _Widowmaker_! Someone’s got to keep an eye on you!”

“Well, your eyes are certainly on me,” she said pointedly, leaning over me and nearly giving me a faceful of her cleavage as she reached slowly above my head.

I couldn’t figure out why she’d done that until she sat back up and I saw one of my blasters in—what was she— “Oi! Put that down!”

She raised an eyebrow at me, not putting it down. Instead, she carefully examined it like she was inspecting a fragile specimen at a museum or something. “How crude,” was her assessment.

“I’ll have you know I could kill you with that!”

She looked sceptical. “I don’t even think I could kill _you_ with it.”

“It’s more powerful than it looks, you know! Each one of those lasers packs the same punch as a 9mm!”

 _Now_ she looked interested in it. “Really,” she said, and then fit it into her hand to see how it felt.

Suddenly, I got why she hadn’t brought her _own_ gun. She was probably planning on using mine all along, wasn’t she?! “Oh, that’s nice,” I said sarcastically. “Kill a girl with her own guns.”

She gave me a long, tired look. I found it rather patronising. “You still think that’s what this is, chérie? A murder?”

“Well, what else would it be?” I shot back at her. “A church fete? You are an assassin, after all, and I _am_ your sworn enemy! Of course it’s a murder!” I paused, realising how that sounded. “Well, an attempted murder, anyway.”

“I am a professional,” she said with disdain. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead _long_ before you knew it was me who fired the bullet.”

She kept on saying that sort of thing, but I was yet to see more than one anonymous assassination out of her. Plus, I’d fought with her _loads_ of times when she could have shot me but wanted to make sure she could parade triumphantly around me for ages beforehand. “That’s rubbish, you _love_ messing about with people first!”

“So that’s what this is, is it?” she asked tiredly. “Me ‘messing about’ with you before I _kill_ you?”

Before I could answer, she pushed the nose of my gun into my neck. “Well, now that you mention it, shooting you with your own gun does have a kind of poetry to it,” she murmured, her thumb stroking the side of my blaster. “There are so many things I could do with it that I’m not sure which I prefer more. I could shoot you here,” she pressed the gun against my neck, “and you would die here on this floor, suffocated by your own blood. Or, I could shoot you here,” she moved to point the gun at my glowing Chronal Accelerator, “and you would simply disappear again. Flickering in and out of time.” A sound outside caught her attention; she appeared to ignore it, slowly bending forwards over me again, her face up close to mine. She smelt like sweet wine. Oh no, she was about to kiss me again, wasn’t she!? I held my breath. “Or,” she said, her cool breath tickling my lips, “I could shoot you _here_ , and let someone else do the work for me.” She smiled.

Why was she—?

It all happened so quickly; I heard my blaster fire, the pressure on my wrists eased and then suddenly I was flipped over again, on top of her. Underneath me, she suddenly didn’t look smug at all. Her grin was completely gone. She looked—

— _frightened_? What—?

“Help!” she cried out in her regular old Amélie voice. “Help me!”

I didn’t know what was—

“ _Put your hands in the air_!” A megaphone-boosted voice ordered me from the door of the restaurant.

I snapped my head up and looked to where it was coming from; the front door was wide open and there were several officers pointing their guns right at me. ‘Put my hands…?’ I looked down at them. They were free; Widowmaker must’ve shot those handcuff off with my blaster.

Well, good. I straightened, I pointed down at her. “Don't worry!” I yelled back, trying to explain. “ _She’s_ the one who started this, not me! I’m the good guy! A moment ago she had me in handcuffs and was about to murder me!”

Widowmaker pretended to weakly struggle underneath me, ignoring everything I’d said and putting on her best damsel in distress voice. “Oh, please, won’t somebody help me?”

I scoffed at it—I mean, _look_ at her—but the officers weren’t playing about. They’d clearly bought her act, which was bad news for me. “This is your last warning, Ma’am,” the constable said to me, megaphone in one hand and gun in the other. “Put your hands in the air or we will be forced to open fire!”

 I grimaced. “Okay, okay, I know how this looks,” I reasoned, trying to placate them, “but this is all a big misunderstanding, really. This person I’ve got right here is wanted in like thirty countries for crimes against the—”

“ _This is your last warning_!”

I happened to glance down at Widowmaker while I was trying to figure out what on earth I should do, and noticed her expression. There was a ghost of a smile on her lips. She was _enjoying_ this.

She locked eyes with me, giving me her best ‘terrified’ expression. “Please, officers!” she said, still looking dead at me. “Please, save me from this _awful_ woman!”

I narrowed my eyes. _Oh, you filthy little…_ That was it, I’d had it with this woman, I _swear_ , I was going to _bloody—_

A series of bullets whistled past my head. They were almost definitely warning shots rather than a real attempt to kill me, but when I looked up and saw all those barrels pointed right at me, it was like a reflex, I blinked out the way.

Doing that had the unfortunate side effect of basically making me look like some super villain with special powers, though, because all the police _gasped_ and then there were panicked bullets spraying everywhere.

I ducked behind a pillar, peeking around it. “No! Stop firing, there’s been a big mistake!”

They weren’t listening to me, though. They were beckoning at Widowmaker. “Quickly! Come over to us!” they were saying. “You’ll be safe here, we’ll take care of you!”

I made an actual gagging noise. _That woman_. I stole a quick peek at them and saw the policemen all gathered around her, protecting her and fawning over her like she was some sort of _brave survivor_ or something and trying to escort her out. She was playing along. “I was so frightened,” she said, glancing over at me to make sure I was watching. “That woman is so scary, please lock her up for a very, very long time…”

You _had_ to be kidding me… I gave her the tiredest bloody look.

It appeared to entertain her more than it did anything else, though, but the policemen didn’t notice the smile she was giving me. One of them was gently patting her back. “We’ll take care of her, don’t you worry. What’s your name, Ma’am?” His colleague was already tapping away at a tablet beside them.  

“It’s Amélie LaCroix!” I shouted over to them. “L-A-C-R-O-I-X! Otherwise known as Widowmaker! She’s wanted for—”

The policeman with the tablet stopped suddenly. He was reading something from it. “—for _thirteen homicides_ in the same number of months _._ ‘ _Amélie LaCroix was added to the international watch list in 2056 after a series of charges were laid against her in Switzerland_...’” Even from this distance, I could see there was a photo on his screen.

It happened in slow motion: all the policemen looked from the photo to Widowmaker, eyes widening. It was clearly the same person.

That smile she’d been smugly directing at me abruptly faded.

 _Hah, time’s up_! I thought indulgently, this time giving _her_ my own smug grin.

Before the penny dropped and the policemen could snatch her, though, she extended her hand up toward a high window in the entrance. Something shot out from under the wrist of her blouse. “Adieu, chérie,” she said calmly, blowing me a kiss just before she smoothly grappled out of the open window.

All the policemen stared at the window for a second, stunned. “Get her!” the constable shouted, scrambling to pull himself together. A couple of the policemen ran out the door.

I stepped out from behind the pillar, feeling _pretty_ smug. I probably had a bit of a swagger. “I _told_ you!” I said primly to them. “ _I_ was simply trying to do my civic duty as a citizen of this fine country to make sure that _Widowmaker_ didn’t—”

He pointed at me, too. “And her! Get them both!”

 _What_? “But I didn’t do anything!” I tried to protest, blinking out of the way of the policemen charging at me. They turned, trying to figure out where I’d gone. I was behind them. “Honest, I was just trying to make sure _she_ didn’t— _ugh_!” One of them spun right around and tried to snatch me. He missed.

I could already see them reaching for their guns again and that was _bad_ news if they were this close. Clearly, I was going to have to bail on this particular party and hope that later it became clear who the _real_ villain was. I blinked over to my blasters, grabbed them, and blinked out onto the balcony again, skidding over to the edge and looking down at the ground below. Could I make it?

“That’s a long jump for such a small woman,” a voice said from one of the balconies above me. Widowmaker was reclining calmly on a railing watching me; when I looked up, she gave me a little wave with her fingers.

Ugh. “Oh, sod off!” I told her flatly. “This is all your bloody fault!”

She examined her nails. “I’m not the one that flipped over a restaurant table and pulled her guns on an unarmed woman.”

 _Oh, you had to be—_ “Pulling my guns on a wanted terrorist is hardly the same as threatening an innocent woman!”

“I was innocently eating my dinner,” she said in a very un-innocent voice.

“You were baiting me was what _you_ were doing!” I corrected her, remembering the stockinged foot creeping up the inside of my trousers, the wink, and the kisses before that…

“Is that what you’re going to tell the police when they catch you? That I ‘baited’ you to destroy a restaurant and scare all those people?”

I scoffed at her. I’d had enough of this, I needed to get out of here. “Look, seeing as this is all _your_ fault, are you going to stand up there watching me or are you going to redeem yourself by helping me get across this gap here?”

She batted her eyelashes and didn’t move a single bloody muscle.

Of course she bloody didn’t. I put my hands on my hips. “Oh, nice, you get me in trouble with the police on purpose and then don’t even help me escape?”

“You didn’t have any trouble escaping across it after I kissed you before,” she pointed out with an oh-so sweet smile, and was about to say something else completely uncalled for when a bullet whizzed past her head and shut her up. She ducked, wide-eyed and searching for where it had come from.

At the balcony door, two policemen were aiming their guns at us.

Uh oh. I needed to get out of here, pronto.

I jumped over the railing because she sort of had a point: I _had_ made the opposite balcony before, hadn’t I? With three blinks I made it this time, too— _just_. I needed to grab the railing to stop me from toppling over it, though, and let me tell you, with bullets whizzing all about me it was _not_ that easy. It was rather impressive, actually, if I do say so myself.

Fortunately, the door to balcony I’d landed on was unlocked and there was no one home. I pulled it open and ran through the house, mentally apologising to the poor people who lived here and were going to get home to their balcony door being wide open.

Then, I had a thought. What happened if someone burgled this house because _I’d_ left the balcony door open while I was trying to escape from the police? I stopped in place. I didn’t want to be the cause of a burglary. I should fix that, shouldn’t I?

I took a quick detour back to close the balcony door and lock it so robbers couldn’t break in. Then, I went back to rushing out the front door (stopping for a tick to check that was locked too), through the hallways and up several flights of fire stairs that opened a roof top. _Perfect_. Police usually had big trouble trailing people up here. I checked about for helicopters, though, just in case.  

I couldn’t see any flying about in the thick London smog, but what I _could_ see though was the tail end of one Call Sign: Widowmaker as she grappled across the gap between two buildings and disappeared down onto another rooftop.

 _I should follow her_ , I thought, thinking she’d probably lead me back to Talon and it would be handy to know where their hideout was in London. That would certainly make Winston less angry with me for being in trouble with the police _again_.

But… doing that sort of thing was what’d gotten me into this situation in the first place. I was already knee-deep in it with the law already, did I _really_ want to make things worse?

Below me, sirens were already blaring in the laneways, and there were red and blue lights flashing all over the walls of every building. I put my hands on my hips, watching all the police cars pulling up in front of the posh restaurant. There were a lot of them, which meant I was probably going to be in a lot of trouble again.

Oh, who was I kidding? If I was going to cop it anyway (hah!), I might as well have something to show for it, am I right? I should _definitely_ follow her.

Turning, I blinked across the gap between the buildings and followed where I’d seen her heading.

It actually wasn’t that hard to follow her trail. Her grapple left white streaks where it scratched the stone, and she must have been in a big old rush to get out of there, because she was leaving them _everywhere_. It was rather sloppy, if you ask me.

I followed them across the buildings, trying to imagine where they could be headed. I couldn’t think what a Talon hideout might look like around _this_ end of London. All the houses were pretty squashy, so unless they’d set up shop in, well, a _shop_ , Talon’s base was probably in some dodgy little flat like mine somewhere. Hah, it was funny to think about Talon cramming a prima donna like Widowmaker into a little bedsit above a Chinese take away.  

The white scrapes stopped at an industrial-looking skylight, and when I dropped down through it, expecting to fall right down into Talon’s London Lair, I found myself in a—

—a _car park_?

I stood, frowning. It looked a bit familiar, but not really the sort of place I’d imagined Talon would—

“What took you so long?”

I jumped, holding up my blasters. Widowmaker was leaning on the boot of her expensive black car, arms crossed. She certainly didn’t look like she was about to attack me. In fact, she was smiling.

I lowered my blasters. “What are you on about, ‘took so long’? I just followed you halfway across—” Wait… Those white streaks in the stone… “— _oh_.”

Her smile deepened. She pushed off her car and wandered forward; I backed away from her until I hit someone else’s car. Its alarm went off and made me jump _again_.

You wouldn’t have thought Widowmaker even noticed. She was too busy _staring_ at me as she hauled me up against someone’s little hatchback and towered over me. 

Uh oh. “I should shoot you right now for getting me in trouble with the police!” I managed, pushing my blasters into the soft skin of her stomach.

“Pfft, like you’re not completely capable of getting in trouble with them all by yourself,” she told me dispassionately. Then, she circled my Chronal Accelerator slowly with an index finger. “But enough of that.”  

I opened my mouth to protest, but she kissed me with those cold lips again. This time, her tongue was cool against mine, too.

I just stood there, wide-eyed and blinking, being passionately kissed against a honking, flashing car by a woman who I’d been 100% certain was plotting to murder me.

It was hard to focus on the ‘wanted to murder me’ part of that, though, because her fingers were toying with one of the buttons on my shirt. I was torn between pistol-smacking that bloody hand away from me, and sort of wondering what would happen if she _did_ undo them.

She didn’t, though. She left it, leaning back and very slowly and deliberately licking her lips like she’d eaten something really delicious. It made me uncomfortable. The whole thing made me uncomfortable. I shouldn’t kissing her, for Chrissake, I should be fighting with her! Talon was my enemy! It was getting harder and harder to link this to some megalomaniacal Talon plot, though.

For the first time that evening, it seriously occurred to me that Talon might have absolutely nothing to do with tonight. After all, why would Talon want Widowmaker to have tea with me and kiss me? Which meant—

She saw my expression. “Still think I’m ‘messing about’ with you before I kill you?” she asked knowingly.

I gulped. I couldn’t look away from her. Suddenly, everything made sense: her making sure I saw her in her bra. Her _flirting_ with me like there was no tomorrow. The fact that while she clearly enjoyed a different sort of ‘messing about’ with me, not once had she made a single attempt to actually hurt me.

Oh no. No, I didn’t think this was about killing me anymore.

She could tell, and she spent a moment indulgently staring at my lips—was she going to kiss me again?—before she bloody _didn’t_ kiss me again, and stepped back.

She laughed once; there was something infuriatingly triumphant about it. “Let’s do this again sometime,” she said casually, like we’d just come back from a nice trip to the pictures or something, and like she hadn’t been tantalisingly close to _ravishing_ me.

Then, she climbed into her stupidly expensive car, calmly fixed her lippy, and drove off. I watched her car disappear around the corner of the exit ramp, jaw open.  

When I finally exhaled and closed my jaw, I could still feel her waxy lipstick on my mouth.

It actually took me a few seconds to pull myself back together, because I felt _completely_ out of it, suddenly.

What on earth had just happened to me?! I’d just nipped out to do a spot of shopping, and ended up having tea with Widowmaker and she _hadn’t_ tried to kill me. Well, not really. I hadn’t really tried to kill her, either. There had been kissing too—quite a lot of it, actually. And despite destroying a restaurant, scaring a lot of people and landing myself in trouble with the police, it was becoming sort of clear what I’d really spend my afternoon doing.

Great Scott, I’d just been on a proper date with _Widowmaker_ , hadn’t I?! 

 


End file.
